It’s hard to compete with WhatsApp in consumer messaging market, but BlackBerry should be able to easily beat it in the enterprise space. To that end, the company unveiled BBM Protected — the first solution offered in the new eBBM Suite — to bring secure and reliable real-time mobile messaging to regulated industries.
The service will offer unrivalled level of trust in enterprise messaging with end-to-end encryption of messages that uses symmetric encryption keys for BBM messages and best-in-class technology for public-private signing and encryption key pairs.
Employees will be able to use a single well-known, well-loved app to connect with internal colleagues under this regulated level of enhanced security, while remaining free to message BBM contacts outside the organization simply and easily with the privacy, control and security that is already inherent in BBM. For IT administrators and infrastructure managers, BBM Protected will work across BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry OS smartphones in regulated mode with no OS upgrades required.
BBM Protected as part of the eBBM Suite is expected to launch this summer and will be available to enterprise customers through a monthly per-user fee.